The Ghana Education Service (GES) has directed the headmistress of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology Senior High School, Felicia Asamoah Dankwaa, to step aside.
In a statement on Wednesday, the director general of the GES, Professor Kwasi Opoku-Amankwa, directed the head of KNUST SHS, Felicia Asamoah Dankwaa, “to step down for the regional director of education, Ashanti to take over the administration of the school while management of GES investigates the circumstances leading to the demise of a final-year student on Tuesday 7 July 2020”.
Students protest
Armed police were brought in on Tuesday 7 July to restore order on the KNUST senior high school campus after students of the school organised a demonstration over the death of one of their colleagues.
School officials have been accused of not attending to the student, who complained of a stomach upset during the day. According to the students, out of fear that the boy had contracted COVID-19, school staff left him unattended and in the care of his colleagues for nearly three hours.
Video footage captured by some students of the KNUST SHS show the deceased holding on to colleagues for support and groaning in pain.
News on Tuesday of the death of the business student, Sam Leonard, sparked outrage among his fellow students, who went on the rampage, destroying property including the saloon car owned by the headmistress.
“We were demonstrating because yesterday one of our mates was sick and he was left to his fate to survive on his own because of the fear of the coronavirus,” said one of the students. “Nobody attended to him.
“He was ill, he wasn’t showing any signs since morning, but later in the afternoon, around three o’clock, he started vomiting because he had some stomach ache,” Joy News reports the student as saying.
“Then we rushed him to the classroom blocks, but it seems the teachers were only waiting for his parents to come so that they could take him to the hospital. He was there for close to three hours before his dad came to pick him up.”
According to the students, had the school authorities acted promptly, the boy’s life would have been saved.
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